Arthritic disease such as connective tissue diseases, represented by rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis brings on joint dysfunction by the progression of cartilage/bone destruction and has a large effect on patients' daily life.
Up until now, for drug treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other arthritis, have been used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin and indomethacin, disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) such as gold preparation and D-penicillamine, immunosuppressive drugs such as methotrexate, and adrenocorticoids. However, therapies currently in use cannot completely inhibit the progress of bone destruction, which is the most important problem of concern with arthritis, and are difficult to apply to patients for a long period of time because of adverse effects occurring in association with the drugs used and thereby satisfactory treatment has not been given to patients to date.
To overcome the above problem, studies have been performed; for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-336063 discloses benzophenone derivatives that are effective in the treatment for mouse collagen-induced arthritis. However, it is still expected that the benzophenone derivatives having anti-arthritic activities provide a further improvement in anti-arthritic activities and inhibitory effect on bone destruction caused by arthritis, safety, and pharmacokinetics.
Further, it has been hoped that preventive/therapeutic agent for diseases, in which excessive expression of AP-1 is involved, are developed which provide inhibitory effect on the activity of transcription factor AP-1, suppress excessive expression of a variety of genes based on their inhibitory effect on AP-1, and produce less adverse effects.